Greta,

As per your last email - the Palm solutions are a good way forward I find,
using a Handspring Visor now for about 2 years for my own personal stuff and
community project work.  In my day job, I am finding that staff are
cottoning on about using what are called PDA's - personal digital
assistants - and it seems to be snowballing.

I've worked in various sectors since 1984, from completely voluntary work
through research, to journalism and broadcasting <even the tax office -
Ssssh!> and I'm keen to observe and understand the way work load is managed
and seen by people who feel they're under stress.

In the voluntary sector of course, groups tend to be overworked, almost
always financially under-resourced and managers are often not always the
best people for the roles they acquire and move into because they say, set
up a self help group that attracts lottery grant aid for example.  Here
training helps of course and I do chat with staff - often administrators and
mention about taking stock of existing strengths, spotting the weaknesses
and plugging them up with new training and skills development.

From all this, as many contributors have already added, how people define
stress is important and how people view it in some walks of work where there
is a macho work culture, lunch-breaks are for wimps and things like that.
Some people have even considered admitting to stress as being a weakness and
not being fit for the job.

What I am finding is that people's job roles are not developing in sync with
their markets or service users and this is where a sense of defeat starts to
set in.  They then raise it in their reviews or supervisions and then find
that their line manager is also stressed, isn't getting help from above
them, and the staff member doesn't get taken seriously.  I have come across
a case where a worker has developed panic attacks and hypertension (she also
has a heart condition) and this has not been spotted through any form of,
even informal, health surveillance. Worrying really.

I do draw some comfort in being quite open with myself about how I see
things around me and how I manage tasks and such like but then I used to
thrive on the adrenalin and air conditioning of a production gallery in live
news broadcasting.  Now I find in some, that working to government targets
and funding goals provides more stress factors than I ever though existed.

One question I did want to ask though from the list was about whether stress
is triggered like someone throwing a switch or is it a gradual thing at all?
I appreciate that there might be 56 million different answers of course!

Thanks,

Pete @
Communityplus